Public Platitudes and Hidden Tensions

Racial tensions on college campuses have received renewed attention in the last few years. On a number of campuses racial confrontations between students, which in some instances have escalated into violence, made the news; articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines analyzing what many saw as an alarming new trend, as faculty and administrators wondered aloud what had gone wrong. These confrontations raise an important question: Are these simply isolated incidents? And if not, do they bespeak a significant change in race relations on American college campuses over the last ten years? One way to address these questions is to examine the racial climate at a college where there have been no such public confrontations a campus, in other words, that resembles the relatively quiet outer appearances that were more typical of campuses ten years ago. If the outbreaks that have occurred are part of a larger pattern of racial tensions, then such tensions should be visible even on a quiet campus. Further, if such tensions exist beneath the surface, then it is quite possible that the previous racial calm was only surface deep and that the current outbreaks represent only an escalation of already present conflicts. The purpose of this research is to study the racial climate, including interracial interaction and attitudes, at one such apparently